Month: September 2011

The premise: The web is where the PC industry was before the Mac. No standard UIs. Big opportunity.

Listened to Dave this morning on the ride to work. He’s mentioned Bootstrap from Twitter before, but in his podcast here he explains the why it is such a good thing. The great thing here is that his podcast is one that will help for non-developers understand why it’s important.

I wonder if people on the #SageACT dev team, or any of the add-on developers have looked at this for use in the Sage ACT! Premium for Web product? I’d be interested if they are leveraging others work in this area or if they’ve re-invented the wheel, you’ll need to listen to the podcast to get what I’m asking.

If you develop web apps, I recommend you go listen to it, because it’s only 17 minutes long it ain’t gonna bust up your day to hear a little history and see how it might improve the future.

If Microsoft, Sony, Google, HP and Samsung want to make an impact in the tablet space, there is a very, very simple solution: lose money.

If I was running any of these companies, I would simply create a $99, $199 and $299 tablet and lose $10B getting 100M of them out there. Seriously, Apple will lower the cost of this overpriced device only when some maniac enters the market with a stunning price.
Well, that maniac has arrived, and his name is Jeff Bezos.

There are basically no companies that have good slow decisions … There are only companies that have good fast decisions. As companies get bigger, they slow down decision making, and that’s a big problem. via Google’s Biggest Threat Is Google – NYTimes.com.

If you have only one goal it puts you in a more action-oriented mindset and helps you save more … Too much thinking about which goal is more important keeps people from acting. via Rotman School of Management.

Of more interest to me than the fact checking, is the very common story I’ve seen of systems that were put in place by group of people, who’ve handed over the reins to someone else, who in turn have passed it on to another someone, and the knowledge of how the system actually works is gone.

I see this daily on a small scale and every now and again, it’s a not so small system that’s completely just flying on it’s own. No-one knows quite how it works, or even quite what it does.

The only way to reduce the risks inherent in these systems is to have good, clear documentation. Documentation that includes peoples names such as employees, contractors, suppliers, even competitors, that someone might be able to at least contact 10 years later and say “Hey, do you remember working on the xyz project? Would you be able to help us out here?”

Fresh post from Seth Godin, where he suggests we start some converstations with this:

“We’d like to roll the … technology … back to the way it used to be, even though it almost never works out that way. Here’s why it’s going to be different this time.” via Seth’s Blog: Forward or back?.

Red Hat has begun to expand its Brisbane headquarters, with plans to boost engineering and support staff for the Asia Pacific region after it added a third level to its facility. via Red Hat expands Brisbane office.

…besides being created by the legendary Philip Kaplan (if you’re over 35 and were laid off by a dot-com you know who @pud is, and you know how great his email newsletter was), we think TinyLetter is a unique take on email marketing newsletters because:

It was built from the ground up by someone who is NOT from the email marketing world,

And you can sign up to my tinyletter newsletter there by visiting tinyletter.com/benhamilton. Ok, so maybe it’s not a new take on newsletters, but the implementation does seem to be, and in my view, simple is good.

..a brand new entry level desktop laser engraver and cutter designed for hobbyists. The manufacturer, Full Spectrum Laser, has designed this machine as inexpensively as possible to make laser cutting a possibility to a larger audience that can’t afford an industry standard machine… via Inventables.com.

Sage ACT! 2011 and 2012 require Microsoft Installer 4.5 or better to be installed. I like to know prior to running the Sage ACT! installer just which version is installed as the Sage ACT! installer will install it if it’s required and then do a reboot. And we all know that reboots are often not welcome.

Thus for one an all’s installation enjoyment, here is the code for determining just which version of the Microsoft Installer is present.

This guide represents our advice on how to get the most out of Outlook 2010. However, it is not a comprehensive guide. A few core scenarios are covered to help you leverage Outlook into your information management needs. Best practices for Outlook 2010 – Outlook – Office.com.

So I ran into an issue I’ve not seen before yesterday. Couldn’t get Microsoft Outlook 2010 configured to talk via IMAP to Microsoft Exchange 2003, although the username and password was correct, it just would not connect. Turns out the answer is in this Microsoft KB article: Users Cannot Log On Using POP3 and the Error 0x80040920 Is Logged. Although about POP3 and not IMAP, the fix is the same, make both the account name and the alias in Microsoft Exchange the same.